At January 3rd I feel somewhat late to the resolution party. Even all the resolution haters out there seem to have taken the time to express their dislike by now. I bet you’ve all taken down your Christmas trees, too.

But guys its ONLY the 3rd!

I normally like to give myself the entire month of January to come up with, plan out, and get used to my resolutions, but this year I’m ahead of the game. I hope this isn’t a bad sign. Haha… Honestly I think a big part of my speed this year is that I was able to use my 2014 resolution tracking document as a template, rather than starting from scratch. And trust me, having a way to track this stuff is a key to success.

Like last year, even though I have both running and non-running resolutions, I’m only going to share the running and blogging ones with you guys. Posting the whole list would take too long, and you’d probably think I’m insane. Likely, I’ll share a few of those non-running resolutions throughout the year, whether or not I explicitly tell you about them now.

One more thing before I get to the list. While I do have a somewhat lengthy list, I’m not sure it’s complete yet. I’m considering this a work in progress that I’ll update as the year goes on.

2015 RUNNING RESOLUTIONS

• Take an off-season. Or more specifically, a self imposed, non-injury related, continuous 3 week break from running. I think it’s a good idea to give my legs a break. I’ve read a few articles about it and have started to sort out a plan. I’ll probably write a post about it. 
• Do NOT run a marathon. Next time I run a marathon, I want to run it faster. By an hour, at least. Going into training in 2014, I was faster than in 2013, and I did speed work. But my long run pace (at the same effort) wasn’t any better, and my race time was MUCH slower. Even though this year’s race was tougher, I still don’t think I should have been quite as slow as I was. Additionally, every time I check pace calculators using my recent race times, I come out with a marathon time over an hour faster than I just ran. So, something is up with how I’m training, or maybe I’m just much slower at the marathon than other distances? Either way, I want to figure this out before I run another marathon.  
• Improve at the 5k. This resolution is a little less clear than the previous two, but I’m not sure exactly where to set my goal for this one. I’ll start with trying to PR, but I’ll see where training takes me, and I’ll get a more specific goal out here when I check back in. 
• Stop whining pre-run. I like running, and I need to quit acting like such a baby before every run. The second I start going, I enjoy myself. I look forward to long runs throughout the week, and shorter ones throughout the day. So, why on earth when I’m finally going to have a chance to run do I whine and moan about HAVING to run. I don’t know, but I need to stop. Any ideas on punishments or rewards for good behavior?
• Try out an 80/20 running plan. I got the book 80/20 Running for Christmas, and it’s fascinating. I’m really looking forward to giving it a try for 5k training, and then possibly for longer distances if I like it.

And for the blog…

2015 BLOGGING RESOLUTIONS

• Post (at least) twice a week. Or 3 times a week, or every other day. I’m not sure what I’d like my schedule to be. But I would like to have one.
• Create a backlog of posts. Hey, maybe if I have some posts ready to go at a moments notice, I won’t end up with two weeks of radio silence when I get busy. This could help with the consistancy/schedule I’m talking about in number one.
• Write some product reviews. I’m not sure if this is going to be fun for me, but since I enjoy reading reviews for new products on others’ blogs I think I should give this a try.
• Read running books and post about them. I have several books about running, time to read them all! Also, I really want to see Unbroken, but I hear you should read the book first. 🙂
• Catch up on and write retroactive race recaps. I have notes on almost all of the races I’ve ever run, and I’d like to get this info on the blog. Plus, I have a few 2014 races I haven’t gotten around to recapping, yet. 

That doesn’t sound too bad now does it? I mean, the first two running resolutions are to not do things, so that shouldn’t be too tough, right? I suppose we’ll find out! Last year I checked in on my resolutions monthly, but this year I’m switching to a quarterly schedule. So, I’ll be back in early April with an update.

Have you made resolutions yet? Or have you declared your dislike for them? Do we have any similar ones?